WOOD PIGEON. 125 



The eggs, which are delicious eating, are two in 

 number, pure white, and of a rounded oval form; two 

 and sometimes three broods are produced in the season, 

 but the third may possibly be only the consequence 

 of a previous one having been destroyed or prevented : 

 the eggs are hatched in sixteen or seventeen days. 

 James Croome, Esq. informs me that he once found 

 three eggs in a nest. Since the above was in type, 

 my second son, Reginald Frank Morris, found three 

 also in one nest in a wood near Londesborough, in 

 the East-Riding. The young are fed from the bills 

 of the parent birds with the food previously swallowed, 

 reduced to a sort of milk. The male and female both 

 take their turns in hatching the eggs and in feeding 

 the young, the former sitting from six to eight 

 hours from nine or ten in the morning to about three 

 or four in the afternoon. 



The first brood are abroad by the beginning of 

 May; the second in the end of July. Mr. Macgillivray 

 has known the young unfledged in October, and a pair 

 with down tips to the feathers on the 26th. of that 

 month; Mr. Hewitson, too, so late as the middle of 

 September; and R. A. Julian, Esq., Jun., on the i5th. 

 of that month, 1851, at Minchenay, near Holbeton, 

 Devon; so also E. C. Nunn, Esq., at Trevan Wood, 

 near Diss, Norfolk, on the 25th. of the same month 

 in the same year. 



